Best from Waste

By Chirag Sharma 

Looking for something different to accessorize your living spaces? Well, here are some easy-to-accomplish no-expense ideas that will rejuvenate your interiors. 

Decorating your home is purely an exercise in personalizing your space. Often one gets tired of the repetitive fare that home stores offer; sometimes even amazed at what sells! Let’s check out a few DIY accessorizing elements that will add a Bohemian touch to your decor:

  a) Transform an unused or tarnished kadai into a Feng Shui water body – add to it a few seashells, coloured baubles or just a few tulsi leaves for that authentic Indian feel!


b) Bring out an old teapot or milk jug and peg it with a croton on the side table. It makes a handsome catch-my-eye piece of accessory. Better still; use it as a hanging plant holder outside your window!


c) Bottoms of used Coke and Pepsi plastic bottles make awesome holders for floating candles. Cut out the bottoms with a crimped rim (filed to smoothness) and fill with coloured water. Use floating candles or oil wicks to complete the picture.

d)     Have some carefully stashed away some old chiffon/chinon dupattas? Make simple sheers out of these –– use single-stitch method so that you can re-use them later.  Don’t bother about the colours. Let them mingle or contrast with the remaining furnishings – they will create their own magic!

  e) Bring out all the lovely greeting cards that you have sentimentally stashed away – wedding day wishes, birthday wishes, anniversary wishes, baby wishes, house-warming wishes – and make a fine collage of them keeping intact the names of people who sent them and personal messages, if any. Look for a beautiful spot in the home and voilà; you have an exceptional pièce de résistance to show off to your friends!

The idea is to be unique. The idea is up to your imagination! Exploit it to the extent possible.